


we fresh like havana

by the_aesthetic_of_happiness



Series: the crimeful contempire [3]
Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: Action & Romance, Aged-Up Character(s), Childhood Friends, Crimes & Criminals, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Fist Fights, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Girls Kissing, Girls with Guns, Heist, Hurt/Comfort, Light-Hearted, Mafia ITZY, Minor Choi Jisu | Lia/Hwang Yeji, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Slow Dancing, Twins Hwang Hyunjin & Hwang Yeji, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29598762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_aesthetic_of_happiness/pseuds/the_aesthetic_of_happiness
Summary: Yuna hasn’t robbed this bank before, but she’s studied its blueprints, and she’s half-convinced that she could pull this off blind.“Yeah, well, you’re practically blind,” Hyunjin says, when Yuna tells him this. “Vision obscured by your heart eyes for Chaeryeong.”She elbows him off the roof.
Relationships: Lee Chaeryeong/Shin Yuna
Series: the crimeful contempire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790509
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	1. we a star, queen boulevard, we live how we wanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [honeyeji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyeji/gifts).



> this work is part of a series all set in the same universe, but it's completely functional as a standalone <3 please enjoy!
> 
> thank you hyun for supporting me and my struggle with this chaeryuna (aka yuchae) heist fic, it's been a long time coming

They have been friends for years.

Yuna has been in love with her for years.

They were best friends in school, when they wore matching yellow uniforms and giggled over yogurt containers together. Then they were partners in crime, the youngest recruits to walk the halls of the mafia headquarters that every police officer in the contempire both feared and respected. And  _ then _ they were roommates. It was a long story.

Yuna never thought that the mafia thing would get this far. She started when she was a wee teenager because otherwise she would be bored at home all by herself; plus, Chaeryeong’s older sister had advertised the activity as a fun extracurricular club where all the cool kids hung out. She wasn’t  _ wrong _ . Yuna knew that all the cool upperclassmen boys and girls were collectively part of some type of Cool-Kids-Only group. Because when the final school bell rang, they all gathered near the entrance of the school and did a head count to make sure all of them were there—there were about a dozen of them—and then they disappeared down some alleyway, all mysterious-like.

Yuna would later come to know those kids as the members of her squadron. When she and Chaeryeong were initiated into the mafia circles, they became the final two members of this generation of the kids who worked for the mafia just because they had nothing better to do with their lives.

“Do you like it here?” asked Yuna, one night, lying beside Chaeryeong in bed. They had a bunk bed in their dorm, but Chaeryeong never used her own bunk, just cuddled up next to Yuna under the excuse of the ladder being too tall.

“Yeah. Thank god you finally washed your oily bedsheets. They smell nice now.”

“No, not that, dummy,” said Yuna, nudging Chaeryeong with her elbow. “Do you like it  _ here _ .”

They didn’t talk about these things much. Didn’t talk about what they both knew: that the mafia biz had become their livelihoods, since neither of them could afford university fees. Not that their grades were anywhere near high enough to qualify for university in the first place.

“I like it where you are,” said Chaeryeong.

Yuna gave her an arched look. “Are you just saying that?”

Chaeryeong looked mischievous in her flannel pajamas, the wire of her mouthguard visible from where a hint of a smile could be seen. “Do I ever say things I don’t mean?”

The answer was sometimes. Chaeryeong was a shifty girl. Earlier that day she’d told their boss that she’d handle kitchen duty, only to sneak off and program one of the new bot servants into washing all the dishes for her so she could go hang out in the dance room with the other girls. And the day before, in the raid of the town hall, she’d taken an extra grand from the safebox despite orders to only extract a certain amount. Shifty. She was shifty. 

Yuna liked her anyway. 

“I mean it,” said Chaeryeong, this time in a lower whisper. “I like being around you. Honest.”

Yuna knew that, too. Actions were louder than words. Chaeryeong was bad at words; but she was good at cuddling, good at keeping Yuna warm at night with her leg thrown over Yuna’s knees and her arm resting heavy across Yuna’s ribcage. Also, Chaeryeong was good at dancing. When she danced with Yuna she could tell she liked her. It was something in the way she moved, the way her eyes smiled.

“Okay,” whispered Yuna, and Chaeryeong kissed her cheek and snuggled closer.

Wherever they went, they’d be okay. If they were together.

###

That was three years ago.

“ _ Are  _ you together?” asks one of the boys, when Yuna is done telling him this story.

“You know we’re not,” grumps Yuna, kicking lightly at his side. “Don’t rub it in.”

“So let me get this straight,” says Seungmin, then chuckles at the pun. He only barely dodges another kick before righting himself into his original comfy position on the leather lounging couch. They’re taking a break from training just to laze around and snack on chocolate chip bagels and, apparently, talk about Yuna’s love life. She has no idea how it came to this. “Let me talk! Let me talk. So you’ve been chums with Chaeryeong for like a decade, you pined after her all throughout your teenage years, and now . . . you’re both grown-ass women who still can’t handle their own emotions enough to confess?”

Yuna sniffs. “I’m barely an adult. I’m twenty. Human brains don’t finish developing until, like, twenty-five or something.”

Seungmin sighs and lobs a chocolate chip at her. “Details.” After a moment he perks up. “What if you got a brain mod? They’ve got those, you know. Your brain will be more mature that way and then maybe you’ll stand a decent chance.”

Yuna is not going to get a brain implant modification. Those are expensive. Also she likes her brain just as it is. “Seungmin.”

“Oh! I know!” Seungmin says. “How about this. Next game night, me and the boys can rig something up and get you and Chaeryeong locked in the same closet together and then you can passionately kiss for the good old-fashioned 7 minutes in heaven.”

“ _ Seungmin _ .”

There’s a knock on the door. The two friends sit up to see Yeji standing there with a hand on her hip. 

“Break’s over. Move.”

“She just wants time to smooch Jisu,” says Yuna to Seungmin in a stage whisper, and he cackles, whilst Yeji makes an offended noise despite the fact that Jisu is obviously standing right behind her waiting for the time to be smooched.

“Get a room,” Seungmin calls, as he and Yuna exit the room, and Yeji flips him off while Jisu only says in an endearingly confused voice, “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

Yuna is munching on her bagel and walking down the corridor to get to the training hall when all of the sudden, the door to the closest practice room slams open and out tumbles a very dizzy Chaeryeong. Seungmin steps out of the way. Acting out of instinct, Yuna stuffs her bagel down her shirt and dives forward to catch her friend before she cracks her head open on the pseudo-tile underfoot.

“Hey there,” Chaeryeong says breathlessly. She’s dipped backward in Yuna’s arms like some kind of movie star bride. Her face glows with a hint of sweat. “I think I fell for you.”

Seungmin whistles.

“Haha, very funny,” Yuna says, setting her back on her feet. Silly Chaeryeong. Saying stupid romantic stuff and not realizing how much it affects her. She tries to keep her face straight as she takes the bagel out of her bra, then grimaces at the crumbs there before brushing them off her shirt. “What were you doing in there, anyway? Cartwheeling around in the studio?”

“Practicing my anti-gravity gloves.” Chaeryeong flexes her hands and their black, lacy, fingerless gloves. “They work well, but they make me a little motion-sick. Like, I’m not really used to being upside-down for so long.”

Yuna eyes the gloves. Why does Chaeryeong look so sexy in gloves. 

“Is the lace really necessary?” is what she finally asks.

“Mm? You don’t think it looks good?”

“I mean, most things on you look good,” Yuna says. She’s just being a supportive friend, of course. Speaking her totally unbiased opinion. 

“Aaaand that’s my cue to leave,” says Seungmin, backing away. Chaeryeong throws him a confused glance, then looks back at Yuna, who is currently giving Seungmin a  _ stfu _ face while he mimes with his fingertips pressed together that Yuna should kiss her.

“Something you wanna tell me, Yuna?” asks Chaeryeong.

“No,” Yuna snaps.

“Fine. Come on, let’s go to the training hall. I'll let you have a turn with the gloves, if you want. I also have an extra pair."

"Ryeong you know I'm shit at acrobatics," says Yuna, following her. "You'll just show me up."

"I know," says Chaeryeong happily. "I will positively kick your teeth in at it. I'm quite simply the best at all things balance."

" _Excluding_ humility," mumbles Yuna, and Chaeryeong elbows her. "Hey! Humility is a type of balance."

As they're about to enter the hall, Chaeryeong stops and turns toward her, and something seems to be on her mind. Yuna waits for her to speak, and is surprised when it happens.

"You don't have to spend all your breaks with Seungmin, you know. I was in that practice room all by my lonesome. I could've used some company."

Yuna laughs. "We spend every night together in our dorm, don't we? Isn't that me keeping you company?"

"It's you being my roommate," Chaeryeong emphasizes. "Also it's—"

"—me being your best friend?" finishes Yuna expectantly.

"Yes, that, but _also_ it's—" Chaeryeong seems to be struggling for what to say. Yuna is patient. “I guess, I’m just trying to tell you that I—”

The door opens suddenly, jolting both of them, and Seungmin pokes his face out, looking hassled. "Come on, you two," he complains. "Yong is wondering why you haven't arrived yet."

Yuna glides past him, the soles of her shoes squeaking against the gym floor. On her way she flicks Seungmin on the forehead. He yelps at the pain. _Serves you right for interrupting my conversation with Ryeong_ , she thinks, and she doesn't catch the way Chaeryeong's eyes flick between Seungmin and Yuna uncertainly before biting her lip and following in after her. 

###

One of the things that Yuna hates about her work is the late-night shifts.

They’re unavoidable. It’s mandatory. Biweekly torture. That being said, their boss, Lee Taeyong, does let them select what kind of shift they’re interested in taking on.

Right now it’s the wee hour of midnight. Yuna will hate herself later on for picking a heist shift, but she doesn’t regret the decision right now, not when she’s getting so much quality time with Chaeryeong. 

Well, it’s not exactly quality time. Hyunjin is tagging along, because three is the quorum for heists: one person to keep tabs on time and cameras, another person to act as a decoy, and a third to actually rob the bank. Tonight’s target is the city complex, the stout bronze building that employs defensively armed, automated holo-bots to patrol the area with red lasers that are more for show than for anything. Yuna hasn’t robbed this bank before, but she’s studied its blueprints, and she’s half-convinced that she could pull this off blind.

“Yeah, well, you’re practically blind,” Hyunjin says, when Yuna tells him this. “Vision obscured by your heart eyes for Chaeryeong.”

She elbows him off the roof. He slimes his way back up, of course, using a grappling hook that he probably bribed off a member of the assassin’s guild. Those hooks aren’t common. The Hwang twins are the only two people in Taeyong’s ranks who know how to use them. Hyunjin slings an arm over Yuna’s shoulder, jesting about how she can’t get rid of him that easily, and Yuna lets out a long sigh.

“Okay, guys,” says Chaeryeong, waving them over. They all crouch together on the edge of the building, hidden in the shadow of its chimney. The bank is on the other side of the street. “Hyunjin, are you ready? I hope you charged your holos today.”

“I’m ready, I’m ready,” he says, pulling out his holo-watch. “Trying out a new system today. Gonna use this as a trial run to work out the kinks.”

“ _ Trial run? _ ”

“It’s trustworthy, I promise—”

“Hyunjin, our  _ salary _ rides off this mission!” Yuna says.

“Seriously, couldn’t we have been matched with Seungmin?” Chaeryeong mutters. “He’s much more responsible.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes, fastening the holo-watch to his wrist. It melds against his skin effortlessly, sinking in like a tattoo. Whoa. Yuna’s only heard about tat tech; she’s never seen it with her own eyes before today. Hyunjin taps the face of the watch and pixels flood out, quickly settling into a neat grid formation showcasing the bank’s twenty-four security cameras. The hologram is constructed out of red light, the color with the shortest wavelength which is therefore hardest to see. This way, the watch towers won’t spot Hyunjin from where he is perched on the rooftop.

“We should be done with this quickly,” Yuna says. “In and out. Less than 45 minutes.”

“I say 40,” Hyunjin says.

“30,” Chaeryeong retorts.

“You’re being too cocky there, don’t you think?”

Yuna knows Chaeryeong’s moods. She’s only competitive like this when she wants to prove something. Usually, Yuna will find a way to rein her back in, but tonight, she has something to prove as well. Two can play this game.

She clears her throat. “Let’s make a bet. If I can do it in 25 minutes, Hyunjin gives me his tat tech for the next ten business days. Deal?”

Chaeryeong’s eyes widen. Hyunjin grins.

“Deal,” he says.

  
  


The bank is surrounded on three sides of its four sides by a square acre of empty land. The land used to function as a pseudo gasoline station that had long since been torn down; however, the gas lines under the surface of the earth were dangerous opportunities for a lawsuit. The bank, which had been the only organization willing to convert the barren, cheap-ass land into something useful, hadn’t wanted to take any chances so they’d left a wide berth around the gas lines.

If they spent so much money building this place, outfitting it with velvet windowsill trim and faux brick, they could have afforded to pay some larger air vents. Yuna hates small spaces. Right now, she’s on her belly, crawling through the vents with the single-minded determination that lends itself to people with mild claustrophobia and long legs. 

“You’re breathing too loud,” Chaeryeong whispers into her earpiece from up ahead. 

“No, you are,” Yuna whispers back. “It’s not my fault these air vents are skinnier than my ass.”

“Hmm, unlikely.”

“Shut up.”

They’re both smiling, partly from nervousness of the heist, partly from just the fun of having each other together. Yuna has a feeling that one day, when she’s old and stiff and can’t crawl through vents to rob banks, she’ll view these adrenaline-packed nights as the good old days. Days with Chaeryeong are always good days. She hopes she can keep her around for that long.

“ _ It’s already been 3 minutes, _ ” Hyunjin taunts from their earpieces. “ _ No tat tech for you, Yuna _ .”

Dammit. Yuna crawls faster.

Once they reach the chamber above the vault they’re looking for, she takes out her mini screwdriver and to unscrew the plate attached to the vent floor. Chaeryeong’s hand shoots out to stop her.

“The lasers,” she says lowly. 

She takes out a small circular container of nxi-colored blush. She blows lightly onto the surface of the powder and it settles nicely atop the crisscrossing lasers barring the access plate, lighting them up in visible lines.

Hyunjin speaks up. “ _ If you counteract these lasers with more lasers _ ,  _ it’ll cancel them out. _ ”

Yuna wasn’t born yesterday. “That’s assuming these lasers are the cheap kind. I bet they’re not. We’ll have to dismantle them through our microbots—”

“ _ They’re the cheap kind. Trust me _ .”

“Are you sure?”

“ _ Yuna _ .” Hyunjin sounds like he’s smiling. “ _ You said you could pull this off with your eyes shut. Sounds like someone didn’t do her homework. _ ”

“No, I studied the blueprints.”

“ _ But you didn’t study the lasers _ .”

“Fine, not the lasers.”

Hyunjin laughs. Yuna tries not to but kind of does anyway.

“Enough,” Chaeryeong interrupts, her voice oddly harsh. “You guys can tease each other all you like once we’re done with this.”

After they’ve disabled the lasers with Yuna’s handy laser-disabling starter kit that Taeyong gave her last week ( _ “ _ no, I’m not giving you the official kit, you’re just going to lose it. You’re a beginner. Beginners get starter kits”), they carefully remove the vent. Yuna can see dark red floors underneath, marred by the buljy shadow of the lone security guard, who is standing watch near the side of the room.

“ _ They have a bathroom break in 12 minutes, _ ” Hyunjin says.

If Yuna waits that long, she’ll lose the bet. Chaeryeong senses her impatience. They meet each other’s eyes and trade an imperceptible nod. 

Holding her breath, Chaeryeong flicks her manicured fingernail against the vent. The tiny noise draws the absent attention of the guard, who ambles over with a yawn. They haphazardly look left and right.

Of course he doesn’t look up. People never do.

Without warning, Yuna slips through the vent and lands square on the guard’s shoulders. They are knocked to the ground with a yelp. Yuna quickly flips them over, punches them in the nose, and shakes her wrist out, watching the guard go limp.

Chaeryeong joins her soon enough. She winces at the sight of the blood, trickling out of the guard’s nostril and staining out of their shirt.

“Oh no. That’ll be hard to get out of that uniform.”

She sounds genuinely concerned. Yuna is not as sympathetic. She turns toward the closest security camera and realizes with a start that she’d forgotten to make sure Hyunjin looped the footage.

“ _ I did, I did, calm your titties,”  _ Hyunjin says, as if reading her mind.

Yuna goes over to where the vault is positioned in the center of the room, guarded by sleeping holo-bots. Their eyes are dim, their steel mandibles limp. Wow. Even machinery can’t be counted on to stay awake on the job. Maybe it’s the fact that they lack the capacity to socialize with one another, to make the hours pass faster through kindness and laughter and shared boxes of chewing gum and all the small comforts that Yuna experiences whenever she’s on watch duty with Chaeryeong. In fact, Yuna looks forward to watch duty, because, well, it means time with her best friend.

“Hyunjin, why are you talking about titties?” Chaeryeong says.

“ _ Wouldn’t you like to know?” _

He’s riling her up. Yuna can’t tell why. She’s too distracted, inspecting the closest holo-bot with a furrowed brow. 

“Hey Hyunjin can you run a bitty thermal scan for me?”

“ _ Sure _ ,” he says. There’s a pause. “ _ Okay. Done. There’s you, and Ryeong, and the unconscious security guard. There’s also a few others patrolling nearby.” _

“How many are there?”

“ _ Including the unconscious one, there’s five.” _

There are only supposed to be four security guards on duty at this hour. Something isn’t right.

_ “Hang on.”  _ Hyunjin sounds like he’s confused.  _ “One of them is standing still. They haven’t moved in the past seven minutes. They must be on their break? _ ”

Breaks don’t last seven minutes. They last six. “Where are they?”

“ _ One floor above you. _ ”

Chaeryeong catches on. She sucks in a quick breath a moment after leaning in to inspect the closest holo-bot’s opticals. 

It’s not sleeping. It’s dead. The glass of its eyeballs have been smashed through.

“Someone else is here,” Chaeryeong says in a grim voice.

A chill crawls down Yuna’s spine. Dread pooling her stomach, she slowly tilts her gaze upward.

A face with a wide grin stares down at her through the empty space in the air vent. Yuna yelps and scrambles for her gun. The face laughs, shifting, and Yuna can make out the fact that they’re wearing a black turtleneck which can  _ only _ mean they’re one of Huang Renjun’s cronies. This one has floppy brown hair, sparkling eyes, and a piranha smile.

“You,” Yuna says lowly.

“Howdy, babe,” says Yangyang.

Yuna has never liked Yangyang. They shared a class back in high school—the Los Angeles contempire repeatedly proved itself to be a frustratingly small town—and Yangyang was always calling everyone unnecessary pet names and ditching school for illegal drag races. He was a punk. And he still is, apparently. Why does he have to have the same mission as Yuna tonight? Why?

Chaeryeong drops to her knees and tries to pry the vault box open but Yangyang just laughs.

“I nabbed the cash already. You won’t find it.”

He slides the air vent shut again. There are several clicks as he bolts it into place.

Oh God.

Another guard is definitely going to find them once they notice that the guard in here isn’t leaving for their bathroom break like they’re supposed to—they’ll come in and catch Yuna and Chaeryeong here, red-handed, and best case scenario is they make a run for it and manage to bring minimal shame to Taeyong’s name. Worst case scenario, they get caught and jailed for the next month and a half. Yuna’s gone to jail before. She really doesn’t appreciate jail food.

“I did it,” Chaeryeong hisses, waving Yuna over. She’s unlocked the vault, and its contents appear to be empty, but when Chaeryeong lifts the velvety red cushion and discards it to the side, there’s—

“A false bottom,” Yuna whispers.

The fat stacks of cash smile up at them from where they’ve been neatly hidden away. Yangyang had grabbed the decoy cash. 

Rookie.

“ _ He hasn’t realized yet _ ,” Hyunjin says. “ _ I can see him moving away.” _

Finally, some good news. Chaeryeong stuffs the cash into her expandable purse, and Yuna takes out her explosives.

“Gonna blast through the door,” she says.

“ _ What? No. There’s gotta be a better way _ .”

“There isn’t.”

“ _ Wait Yangyang’s doubling back _ .”

Just then, air vent snaps open, and Yangyang pops his head back in. He’s not smiling anymore.

Chaeryeong stands up, her purse packed with the cash. “You want this?” she says. “Come and get it.”

In a blur, he moves, whipping out a silent tranquilizing gun and firing a dart right at her. She dodges, unlatches her gun from her belt loop, and fires a silent bullet. It’s made of color, the way Taeyong’s weapons are all manufactured these days, and so when the bullet explodes it leaks bright green smoke all throughout the room, obscuring their vision. Yuna is trained to work under colored conditions. She spots Yangyang’s silhouette, dropping down through the air vent to land in the room with them. He’s squinting, uncertainly hefting his gun to and fro.

Chaeryeong whips her leg up and around into a spinning hook kick that nails him square in the jaw. He falls like a bag of sand.

“Bye babe,” she says, mimicking his nickname.

“ _ You need to get out of there, _ ” says Hyunjin through the earpiece, and it’s clear that he’s not joking anymore. “ _ Quick, or this mission is a bust. Get your asses back up that air vent. _ ”

Yuna and Chaeryeong share a look in which a wordless plan passes between the two of them. Chaeryeong digs in her utility belt and tosses a set of familiar lace gloves to her. They’d practiced partner scaling just this morning—Yuna makes swift work of climbing up the closest wall and crawling across the ceiling, the suction cups on the gloves whirring as they supported her weight, and once she gets to the open vent space she tosses the gloves down to Chaeryeong for her to climb up too.

Once they both cram themselves into the vent, Yuna breathlessly bolts it shut. Fuck, her hand isn’t stable. She has to try three times to bolt the final nut into place; by then, Hyunjin is repeatedly telling them through the earpiece to get a move on because the security guards have begun to pick up on how there’s been radio silence from the room for far too long.

“Go, go, go,” Chaeryeong hisses, nudging her forward. Yuna fights back a swallow and begins to crawl forward.

There’s the distant wail of sirens. She prays they’ll make it out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooh i've got you on your toesss look at that cliffhanger ooh. also yes, you read it right, chaeryeong is lowkey jealous of yuna's closeness with the stray kids boyos. the plot, the pining ,,,, mmmmmmh delicious.
> 
> 2nd chapter will b out sometime soonnnn
> 
> ~ yerin,02212021


	2. dance if you wanna, rage if you gonna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 2/2!! mafia yuchae for the win
> 
> i am brain fried rn, and it's late and i've been working on this for the past two weeks straight so im just posting it here in hopes of people enjoying my labor. might come back to make minor edits in the morning when i'm alive again, but for now, please enjoy yuchae brainrot <3

Hyunjin keeps rambling in their ears. He’s the type that talks when he’s nervous. Yuna wishes he would shut up, but it’s not his fault he’s nervous. Dammit, forget the fucking bet they made on all of this shit, they just need to get out of here before they all land themselves in jail.

“Fuck,” curses Chaeryeong, just barely an exhale. Yuna twists around in the almost pitch black darkness of the air vent. She catches the flash of Chaeryeong’s eyes, wide and afraid and looking up at her. “I can’t move.”

“Sure you can. Come on.”

“No, I can’t _move_. I’m—I’m stuck. I can’t feel my leg.”

“What do you mean, you can’t feel it?”

“ _Guys,_ ” says Hyunjin through their earpieces. “ _I have to hide. They’ll see me here. I’ll meet you guys at the rendezvous point._ ”

“No,” Yuna almost shouts. She can’t handle the thought of him leaving them like this. “Hwang Hyunjin you stay the fuck where you are, got it?”

“ _And get all three of us landed in the county jail_?”

And he’s right. They’ve been trained for this type of situation. It’s not a cowardly thing to do, to try to keep matters from getting worse, but all the same, Yuna hasn’t felt this scared in years, and she needs help.

“Stay,” she whispers, through the earpiece. “Stay with me.”

Chaeryeong sucks in a quick breath. Hyunjin grumbles, “ _Fuck. Fine. You owe me_.”

Yuna can practically feel Chaeryeong’s suspiciousness radiating off of her in waves. She thinks Yuna’s being dumb. That, or she’s disappointed in Yuna for being weak. Fucking hell. Yuna wouldn’t give a fuck if she were in this situation by herself—she’d tell Hyunjin to get his ass out of there as fast as he could—but she can’t take risks like that with Chaeryeong’s life on the line. It’s not just Yuna here. It’s both of them. She’d rather sacrifice protocol to save her best friend than follow it only to lose her. God knows she needs all the assistance she can get.

“Narrate to me,” she orders Hyunjin, then begins trying to dislodge Chaeryeong.

“ _You’re near the east wing. If you follow the path you’re on, you’ll go right back out where you came in. I don’t think that’s a good idea. The cops are already swarming the main entrance; it’s only a matter of time before they notice where you entered_.”

Mmm. Yuna makes a noncommittal noise. She’s trying to tug Chaeryeong forward but it seems like Chaeryeong really is stuck on something; neither of them can see exactly what it is, though, and Chaeryeong keeps murmuring that her leg is numb, she can’t feel it, something’s wrong, did Yangyang drug her?

It couldn’t have been Yangyang. There is something else afoot here. Yuna grits her teeth. “I’m going to try and pull one more time,” she warns. “Hard. Ready?”

“Just do it,” manages Chaeryeong.

Her arms are wrapped around Yuna’s upper legs. Yuna turns back toward the front of the tunnel and surges forward, letting out a grunt of exertion, only to be met with even more resistance than before. “It’s not working—” she gasps—

She’s cut off by an enormous crashing noise and then a scream. She looks just in time to see Chaeryeong slip through the raw gap of air vent panels that they’d apparently just dislodged.

Yuna has never moved faster in her entire life. She crams her body into a U-turn and pokes her head into the empty air vent grate, her heart pounding silently in her chest. There’s Chaeryeong, looking alive yet terrified, dangling by her leg. She’s upside-down. The only thing keeping her there from plummeting to her death right in the middle of the storage room below (thank God it wasn’t the main lobby) is the thin pseudo-leather strap wrapped around her upper thigh.

It’s her purse strap. The purse itself is firmly stuck in a groove in the air vent panel; Yuna can see it now. Oh my fuck. Chaeryeong’s leg is rapidly purpling, signaling severe blood restriction, and Chaeryeong looks two seconds away from bursting into tears.

“Yuna Yuna Yuna Yuna Yuna—”

“Look at me,” Yuna says, hearing her voice as if from far away. “It’s a pull-up. I need you to do one of those for me.”

“A—a what?”

The baby hairs around Chaeryeong’s face are dangling upside-down, and her skirt has flopped to reveal her skin-tight shorts. Her breathing is labored. Yuna speaks again. “Remember when we did physical education back in high school? And they made us climb ropes and do pull-ups while hanging off the—”

“I was never any good at those,” puffs Chaeryeong. She strains upward, trying to use sheer upper body strength to haul her entire upper body back upright, but it’s hard, and she never was any good at pull-ups. Or were they called crunches? Yuna can’t remember.

“You can do it. You’re always bragging to me about how strong your abs are.”

“ _Shit_ , Yuna, I can’t—” Chaeryeong attempts again. Her leg looks dangerously black and purple now. Yuna is too afraid to try and reel her back up using the thin strap; what if it breaks? Fuck. The purse is supposed to be expandable.

She pushes its expansion button and here's hoping for it to be of some use. The purse changes size—only to become _smaller_ , as small as Yuna’s palm. She swears as all of the sudden the purse is now dislodged from its groove and Chaeryeong yelps and drops a few inches before she slams to a halt from the way Yuna is now clutching the bag carrying Chaeryeong’s weight with her two hands. This could not get any worse.

“Your gloves,” wheezes Yuna.

Chaeryeong seems to realize she’s still wearing the anti-gravity gloves. Her face hardens in determination and she bites her lip as she prepares to lunge up toward the air vent once more.

Yuna braces herself. Chaeryeong releases a cry as she propels herself upward, far enough that her gloves can suction onto the air vent, and then she’s quickly scrambling back by Yuna’s side, tugging the purse strap off her thigh.

There’s no time to celebrate. “Can you crawl?” demands Yuna.

“I’ll try,” gasps Chaeryeong. Her dead leg should be killing her right now. “Go.”

They struggle forward.

“Hyunjin, meet us at the entrance we came out of,” says Yuna, after at least a couple minutes have passed and she can glimpse the dull city streetlights gleaming through the grate that’s growing nearer and nearer.

“ _What? I thought I told you not to go through there!”_

“Bring your grappling hook,” adds Chaeryeong, catching onto Yuna’s idea. They really are so similar in the way they think.

Neither of them know how to use the grappling hook. Once they reach the end of the air vent, Yuna shoves her way through, pushing the grate to the side and sucking in deep drafts of the polluted yet glorious night air. Chaeryeong drags herself by her side. They’re a mile above ground level, and the police cars are gathered around the entrance of the bank. It’s only a matter of time until they notice them there.

But then again, most people forget to look up. Yuna hopes it holds true.

Across the way, she can see Hyunjin from where he’s perched on the place they left him. He’s uncertain, standing there with his hook in hand.

“ _Okay. Okay. What should we do now?_ ”

“Throw it to us,” Chaeryeong husks through the earpiece.

“ _Like a lasso?_ ”

“Like a tightrope,” says Yuna.

Hyunjin audibly swallows, and then he’s rearing his arm back and hurling the hook in their direction. The girls don’t flinch as the hook embeds itself firmly into a stone hold directly above their heads. Hyunjin had good aim.

Yuna had originally thought that they’d use it like a zipline. Take off their shirts, use them as a T-bar, and slide down to safety. The issue here, and she can feel Chaeryeong realizing it at the same time as her, is that the zipline idea wouldn’t work without a slope steep enough for them to gain traction that would overpower the friction of the T-bar against the rope; as it is, Hyunjin is almost horizontal with them, a good thirty feet away, and gravity is not on their side.

“ _What if I . . . . ?_ ” Hyunjin begins.

There’s two twin thuds of two more wires colliding into the wall in an equilateral triangle above the first. Yuna stares at the shape. What is that going to do.

Chaeryeong stands up. “We have to walk it,” she said.

Yuna’s skin breaks out in gooseflesh. “What?”

“Walk it. Like a tightrope.”

Yuna grabs her ankle. “You’re crazy. You’ll _fall_.”

Chaeryeong slips out of her shoes to stand barefoot, leaving Yuna holding onto her empty boot. “Not if I’m careful.”

It’s better for them to just go to jail than whatever this shit is. “No. Don’t go. You’re out of your mind.”

“ _I agree with Yuna_ ,” chimes in Hyunjin.

“Then what did you make the hand holds for? Listen,” Chaeryeong says. “I’ll make it across, grab my pair of rocket boots from Hyunjin’s satchel, and come right back over to grab you too. He needs to stay where he is because his hook is built into his arm. He can’t use rocket boots because he’s never learned how. I’m the only one who knows how to use them.”

““You have zero balance, you bitch,” Yuna nearly shouts.

Chaeryeong scowls. “I’m a dancer. Bitch.” She turns her back and stretches her back and shoulders in preparation. What does she want to prove? Yuna doesn’t understand her.

“ _ill the rocket boots support two people at once_ ?” asks Hyunjin. “ _I mean, I_ — _I have them, they’re right here in my bag, I just_ —”

“Yes they can support two people,” Chaeryeong says.

“Don’t you have your own set of rocket boots in your purse?” begs Yuna.

“No. I can’t keep them there because the unbalanced Ph level makes their inward chemical gases explode. Expanding purses are tricky, you know that.”

She does know that.

“Don’t you dare,” says Yuna anyway, and she’s not even making sense to herself at this point. “Don’t you d—Chaeryeong!”

She has stepped onto the wire.

At first her arms are outstretched, wobbling on either side of her. Her feet are steady, bare toes curled just right. She chances another step across.

“Just trust me,” she says to Yuna.

“Like fuck I will,” hisses Yuna. “Get back here.”

She ignores her and continues to walk. This time, her hands come up on either side to grip the other two wires.

The city yawns beneath her. The wind whips her hair. She looks like a doll, just one gust of wind away from toppling to her demise. Yuna isn’t breathing.

“Chaeryeong,” she almost sobs.

“ _Hey. Hey,”_ says Hyunjin, picking up on Yuna’s hysteria. “ _Breathe_.”

“How are you—how are you _okay_ with this—?”

Chaeryeong keeps moving. Hyunjin says, calmly, or as calm as he can manage, “ _You have to trust her. This is our job_.”

It’s more than a job. It’s a life. Chaeryeong and crime are the only constants in Yuna’s life and she can’t handle her priorities clashing like this—because God knows that she will always, always choose Chaeryeong, over anything.

“ _Shh, shh_ ,” soothes Hyunjin, and he sounds like he’s at the end of his rope but he’s trying his best.

Chaeryeong keeps moving. And Yuna watches.

She almost forgets to listen to Hyunjin, who is apparently trying to talk her through this. 

“— _if anything, I’m the one who should be worried here. My sister will kill me if I let anything happen to either of you_ ,” he’s saying.

“Forget that. If Chaeryeong dies, how am I ever going to kiss her?” Yuna hisses under her breath to him.

She doesn’t think Chaeryeong was in earshot, but then again, she forgot that all three of them can hear each other thanks to their earpieces. Just then, Chaeryeong stumbles, losing her balance for real. Yuna’s heart leaps into her throat and before she knows it she’s stepped onto the rope, barely aware of the way the thick wire is bowing under her feet.

“I’m coming!”

Chaeryeong has regained her balance, but the confidence in the slope of her shoulders has disappeared, replaced with tight tension. 

Yuna reaches her. 

“Go back,” rasps Chaeryeong, shying away. Yuna has one hand on a side wire, and one hand outstretched toward the other girl.

“We’ll be more stable if we do it together,” insists Yuna.

“I’d rather die than do it together with you.”

And it’s expected that they’ll say ridiculous things while in a situation like this, but Yuna did not expect something of that degree. She stares at Chaeryeong, momentarily forgetting about the mile of empty space underneath her, and thinking only about how her stomach has just dropped all the way to the ground below.

Her skin burns underneath. She looks away.

It’s not safe for her to try and back up; she’s already in the middle of the wire. She stays still. Chaeryeong continues on.

She feels like she’s lost years of her life by the time Chaeryeong reaches the other side. She sees her figure stumble into Hyunjin, who catches her and sets her down so he can start strapping the rocket boots to her feet. Yuna could pass out from stress. Her mouth tastes like blood from how much she’s bitten her lip.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Hyunjin swears suddenly. She sees him shaking his hand out, and realizes he burned himself trying to handle the fiery holodiscs which are starting to power up with the soles of the boots turning red-hot.

“Are you okay?” Yuna rushes.

“ _Yeah, I’m_ — _shit. No, this isn’t good_.” All the same, Hyunjin manages to finish strapping in Chaeryeong’s boots, and then Chaeryeong gets to her feet and leaps off the roof to get to Yuna.

She skates through the air like a professional.

“ _Don’t worry about me,”_ says Hyunjin, although he sounds like he’s in pain. 

Chaeryeong makes it to her. Clumsily, she maneuvers around. “Grab onto me,” she orders. Yuna clambers onto her back and clings tight, shutting her eyes.

They chance their first step off the roof ledge. Chaeryeong curses as the rocket boots wobble under their combined weight.

“Try to shift your weight onto your left side,” she grunts. “I’m trying to keep weight off my right leg because it’s—yeah.”

That leg was the one that’d been nearly throttled to death by the purse strap. Yuna swallows and follows the orders.

They’re halfway across the gorge.

The only warning Yuna gets before Hyunjin screams is the sound of the grappling hook hurtling back across the open air in a poorly executed retraction effort. She sees the trio of wires slam back into Hyunjin’s wrist, coiling there in its installed pouch, yet Hyunjin is on his knees, cradling his arm with his face contorted. Rope burn. It must have exacerbated the second-degree burns on his palm—Yuna’s throat fills with dread.

Then comes the shouting from down below. The police have spotted them.

Chaeryeong is practically limping through the sky at this point, and Hyunjin is more than compromised. Yuna’s the only one here who has a chance at making sure this shit gets done. By the time she makes it to the roof, she’s already thought everything through.

“Take the purse. Go. Go.”

She’s pushing Hyunjin and Chaeryeong to get a move on. They give her a look of confusion. She shakes her head. Hyunjin understands.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Wait, wait, what?” Chaeryeong says, even as he is slinging her arm over his neck.

“Three’s the quorum,” Yuna says as a reminder.

Chaeryeong was the robber, Hyunjin was the time manager. And Yuna is the one left now. It’s what they’ve known since they set out earlier tonight.

But Chaeryeong doesn’t look convinced. The sirens get louder. Their bright lights cast her face in a sick glow, enough to see her creased brow.

Yuna doesn’t have time to wait. She turns and runs.

She doesn’t have to look back to know that Chaeryeong has turned and gone the opposite way.

They do what they need to do.

###

She throws a color bomb into the adjacent street. It explodes in a flurry of crimson and azul. They are the colors of the county sheriff. The police, alarmed, double back to check it out.

Yuna leads them on a wild goose chase, dropping explosive after explosive through the streets and luring them away. The bombs are harmless, but she’s careful about using too much; she doesn’t want it to be obvious she’s just bait. Eventually she throws her last one—this one is a sparkling one, made for theatricals—and stands in its afterglow, letting her hair blow out of its knot so that her silhouette is visible there in the sky.

With effort, she manipulates the sparkling shadows with the techniques her boss has taught her. Several other silhouette-shaped blobs form throughout the cloud of smoke, giving the illusion that there are many more of her than there actually are. She sees the police come to a halt. They don’t want to take on four or five bandits at once.

Yuna makes her getaway.

Her breath is rough yet controlled as she silently flies from rooftop to rooftop. She’s done her job. She just needs to get back to headquarters. 

Rain begins to fall.

###

The doctor, Shotaro, looks unsurprised at Yuna’s loud entrance. He spares her only a brief head-to-toe, then turns back to where Chaeryeong is lying alone on a cot.

“Is she okay?”

“Are _you_?”

He knows she is, she knows he does. It must be a good thing that he is joking. Yuna makes her way to Chaeryeong’s bed. “Careful. She’s barely conscious,” says Shotaro. He’s treating her leg.

“Will she be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.”

Chaeryeong stirs with a weak groan. Yuna immediately clutches at her hand.

“I’m here. Chaeryeong, I’m here, I’m next to you.”

No response. Shotaro does something to her leg and Chaeryeong shudders. He tut-tuts. “How did you even get your knee this swollen?” he murmurs. “It’s bruised like a plum.” There was a stark black ring of skin around Chaeryeong’s upper thigh where the purse strap had dug into her flesh. The purse itself is nowhere to be seen. Hyunjin must’ve taken it to the boss already.

“How was Hyunjin?” she asks.

“Superficial burns on his hands. More uncomfortable than anything,” Shotaro says. “He’ll be fine too. I’m sure he’s just upset he can’t give handjobs for at least a month now. Not that he’s any good at getting laid. Hey, Yuna, you think you can sit there in that chair? You’re stressing me out.”

Yuna collapses into the mentioned chair, her head pounding. The only sound in the infirmary is her harsh breathing, and, after a moment, the click of Shotaro’s first-aid kit.

No matter what Chaeryeong said to her on the wire up there in the sky, Yuna would never forgive herself if something happened to her.

 _I’ve been in love with her for too long_ , she thinks. _It’s destroying both of us. We can’t go on like this_.

She should leave the mafia. Get away from this place. Drag Chaeryeong with her, if she can. The thing is, she _can’t_ —Chaeryeong would never leave. Her sister is here. She grew up here. She knows nothing else except her life here.

She’s so selfish.

 _We can’t go on like this_ , Yuna thinks again. She doesn’t know what she’s referring to. Everything all at once, probably.

Maybe Yuna is the selfish one.

Shotaro is done sooner than expected. He hooks Chaeryeong up to some vital machines, then recedes to his desk, where he will remain, quietly checking his computers and keeping watch over his patients. It’s the dead of the night. No one is here.

Chaeryeong coughs. Yuna looks at her.

She tries to speak. Yuna shushes her.

“It’s okay. Just rest, I’m right here.”

Chaeryeong’s hand is grasping the air. She catches Yuna’s shirt sleeve with surprising strength and mumbles something that she has to repeat twice for Yuna to pick up on.

She sounds an inch away from absolute suffering. “Please don’t get tired of me. You can’t, okay? You have to keep—keep being here. Yuna?”

“I will keep being here,” Yuna says as firmly as she can. Chaeryeong clenches her shirtsleeve.

Here on the hospital bed, her long auburn hair plastered to her face from sweat and her uniform half-sodden with rain, Chaeryeong looks really beautiful. Maybe it’s in the way that her hand slides down Yuna’s elbow to grip her fingers tightly. Maybe it’s in the way she’s looking at Yuna like she’s the only person ever. Like this moment means everything to her.

This is how Chaeryeong lives. Furiously, heartfully, every moment lived to the fullest.

Yuna’s heart is heavy. “You better keep being here too,” she says in a warning voice. “If you don’t, I’ll probably cry for a long time.”

“Don’t worry,” Chaeryeong says. “Please don’t worry. I’ll . . . I’ll keep . . . .”

Her eyes shut.

Yuna’s heart races in the silence. She forces herself to listen to the steady beeping of the machines tracking Chaeryeong’s vitals. This is what Chaeryeong was worried about: she is familiar with the way Yuna panics whenever she’s faced with a hospital room, familiar with the way her brain will trick her into believing the worst.

“You will keep being,” Yuna repeats, to herself, and to sleeping Chaeryeong. “You will.”

  
  
  


The next day, Yuna wakes up to a soft hand against her cheek. It’s Chaeryeong, wearing a tired smile. Yuna sits up—she had been slumped over halfway in her chair, halfway across Chaeryeong’s hospital bed—and wipes the drool off her chin. 

“Still here,” Chaeryeong says.

“Yes, you are.”

“Proud of me?”

Yuna smiles, barely. “Yes. I am.”

###

The next time she visits her boss’s office, she’s taken aback to see that she’s not the only one there. A slim man, shorter than her, is sitting already in the seat across Taeyong’s desk. Yuna hesitates at the door. Her hand lingers on its steel knob.

“Come in,” says Taeyong.

He looks like a average businessman right now. Fashion-forward, with his red hair glossy and his eyebrow slit pronounced as ever. He gestures for her to take a seat.

The other man in the room turns and gives her a smile. “Hello there, Yuna.”

Oh, it’s Huang Renjun. The neighbor mafia lord. She dips her head at him, then sits in a chair, and doesn’t have the energy to analyze how he sneaks her a curious second look. He’s probably wondering why she looks so tired. 

“You did well last week,” says Taeyong to her. “I debriefed Hyunjin. He told me you acted wisely during a time of crisis.”

“Thank you, boss,” says Yuna.

Taeyong clicks his golden pen and checks a document, then looks up and nods at her with a smile. “You three made a good team. I think I’ll set you guys up together the next time you’re on duty.”

Yuna hesitates. 

“Do you have an objection?” asks Taeyong. He doesn’t miss a thing.

“I’m fine working with Hyunjin,” says Yuna. “But Chaeryeong needs to rest.”

“Of course,” says Taeyong. “And she will rest. You three will only be tasked with another mission when she is completely ready.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Renjun leans back in his chair, which makes an audible squeaking noise. He laughs, softly. “You would not believe how embarrassed my man Liu was when he came home sulking the other night because you beat him at his job,” he says, in that light, refreshing tone of his. “I thought his ego would never recover. Goodness gracious. He deserves to be put in his place every once in a while, I’ll admit.”

Yuna tries to smile but it comes out like more of a grimace. Yangyang holds grudges. Yuna can’t say she doesn’t either. 

“I can’t work with Chaeryeong again,” she says, and at this, Taeyong genuinely looks taken aback. “Please. Put me with anyone, but not with her.” Any of the boys would be fine. Hell, even the other girls too. Or even the new recruits. There is no one Yuna wouldn’t work with if it means that she can be away from the one person who makes her heart ache and ache and ache.

Taeyong gives her a long look. She holds his unwavering gaze right back. She knows he’s thinking about the same thing that she is: the time Yuna sat in this chair in this office when she was a girl and asked with her hands folded and her head bowed if she could room with her friend. A lot of time has passed since that day. Now, she’s almost as tall as Taeyong himself. She used to only come up to his shoulder.

He says he’ll see what he can do. She waits until he dismisses her, and after that she gets up and leaves.

Not long after, Renjun exits the office, having finished whatever it was he and Yong were having a meeting about. He stops in the hall next to Yuna. His kind eyes are curious, once more.

“Hi,” he says, gently.

“Hi,” she says.

“You doing okay?”

He is too nice for his own good. “Fine,” she confirms, which is the same answer she gives him every time they run into each other like this. They’ve been friends for a long time. It’s not hard to explain. They talk to each other at the mafia galas.

He purses his lips and looks at her. They are eye level. He is not tall.

“Anything I can do for you?” she asks.

“I was about to ask you that.”

She shifts her weight to the opposite hip. She’s not in the mood for talking to nice people—she is not in a nice mood herself. “I can show you to the door,” she says.

He looks disappointed. Her shoulders lower.

“Fine,” she says, with a soft exhale. “Yeah, I kind of wanted to see you too. Can we talk? I can take you to the food hall.”

Ten minutes later, she’s explaining her predicament while he thoughtfully munches on a blueberry muffin, the wrapper sitting on the table between them. Other people in the food hall don’t bat an eye—they are used to the unlikely friendship between her and the mafia lord.

“No way,” says Renjun. “And you’re certain she heard you.”

“Yeah. Certain,” says Yuna, trying her best not to mope. “She looked mortified. Or, well, she almost fell off the tightrope. That probably meant she was mortified. Right?” She buries her head in her hands. Fuck her life. Fuck it all. 

Renjun says, “So what’s going on between you two right now? Are you just acting like nothing happened?” Yuna squares her shoulders and says nothing. Renjun gives her a wry smile. “You’re avoiding her, aren’t you,” he says. 

A moment passes.

“Come here.”

She gets up and sits beside him. He pats her back. He is such a grandpa. It’s hard to believe he’s only a handful of years older than her; he has always been so more assured. She’s the same age he was when they met, but it’s like she can never catch up. He’s got his love life down and established, and she’s just . . . here, still struggling over the girl that she’s been in love with for more than a decade, the same loser who doesn’t have patience for anything but Chaeryeong. Always her.

“You need to talk to her,” he says. “Don’t you miss her?”

“Yeah,” she whispers.

“Tell me you’ll talk to her.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Good. That’s an order,” he says.

“Are you my boss now, Renjun?”

“I could be,” he says, in that way of his where it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or if he’s seriously considering it. “You and your beau are always welcome among our ranks. I’m sure my girls would love to have you, if only for a brief visit. Ever since Jeno and I got together, they’ve had no drama to thirst over.”

Yuna grumbles. ‘Well. Everyone here is tired of me and my drama. I think they’d even like it if I got away.”

She’s wrong. She knows all the kids here are her family. She’s not strong enough to leave, but she’s not good enough to stay, so she’s just here, the same person she’s always been. 

“Renjun, did you ever think maybe you would settle down?”

“Mm?”

“You know. Like, become comfortable, watch the grass grow. No more missions. Stuff like that.”

Renjun gives her a sideways look. “You wanna quit the biz?”

“Please answer the question.”

“Fine,” he sighs. Then he thinks. “Yes, I suppose I did want to settle down. I still do. Actually, I’m in the process of doing it. Jeno and I have acquired another pet feline, and I think he intends on accumulating many more in the future. Does that count as settling down?”

He can’t be serious. “No, I meant—like, retiring. Peace. Rainbows.”

“My boyfriend and I already have peace and rainbows. There’s no reason why we can’t still keep doing what we’ve always been doing either.”

But would it be possible to keep both Chaeryeong and her job? Every once in a while, Yuna gets tempted to take flight, but she can’t be sure if it’s truly what she wants or just what she thinks she wants. Does Yuna want to become normal? Live out a mundane life, get an education, find an office job? That sounds more frightening than what she’s doing right now.

“Sometimes I think about getting out,” she admits.

Renjun does not look surprised. “We all do.”

They sit in silence, both of them in a deeply shared understanding.

Finally Renjun crumples up his muffin wrapper and yawns. “Have your moody crises sometime when I’m not around,” he grumbles. “Jesus, kids these days. Now, do you think Taeyong would mind if I nabbed another muffin?”

Yuna laughs, unexpectedly, for the first time in a while.“Go ahead.”

###

The confrontation happens soon enough. That night, Yuna finds out Chaeryeong was discharged from the infirmary when she pushes the studio door open and is hit by the cool force of the air conditioning and also the shock of Chaeryeong mid-choreography. 

“What the fuck—what do you think you’re doing?” Yuna says, loud, to be heard over the speakers blasting music. “Chaeryeong, you’re supposed to be resting!”

Mid-spin, Chaeryeong glances at her over her shoulder. Her eyes widen and she swears and stumbles to a stop, reaching for the remote in her pocket to turn off the music. It takes a few tries, the music cycling in between Chaeryeong’s many favorite upbeat playlists, until finally she lands on a lo-fi one and gives up, leaving it to croon in the background of the paradoxically tense atmosphere.

“Hi there,” she manages to say. 

“Don’t _hi there_ me,” Yuna snaps. She drops her bag and marches over. “Ryujin would throw a fit if she caught you like this.”

“Don’t tell her,” Chaeryeong says, right away, her hands clasped behind her back in a show of petinence. “You know how she is. She wouldn’t understand.”

Her sister is the least of her worries right now, to be honest. Yuna gestures at the white bandages bulging around her upper leg. “And am I supposed to understand? Explain yourself.”

Chaeryeong seems to draw herself up. “Maybe you should explain yourself to me,” she says, bravely. “Why didn’t you visit? The infirmary was lonely without you. Even Shotaro got bored of me asking to play Solitaire so many times with him. You did it on purpose, didn’t you? You didn’t even answer my texts.”

“I did,” Yuna protests, even though she really didn’t. All that she’d sent were cryptic, one-word responses to Chaeryeong’s many messages.

From there follows a stand-off. She stands resolutely in her place while Chaeryeong stands resolutely in hers, facing each other with arms crossed and faces set. They’ve always been a pair of stubborn bitches. That will never change.

Chaeryeong gives in first. She breaks eye contact and sits down.

“Take a seat,” she grumbles.

And so she does. They sit on the floor in the studio all alone. The soft music drones on.

Many a night, Yuna has fallen asleep in the dance studio of headquarters, watching Chaeryeong dance and dance and dance in front of the mirror, every curve of her body hugged by music. It’s always been like this. As soon as Chaeryeong gets back on her feet from whatever injury or peril might come her way, she goes to the dance studio in the basement of the headquarters. That’s what all of their squadron does after a scare—they dance it off. 

Sometimes, all five of them girls congregate together to have a bit of a party with chocolate cookies and holo-cigs (Jisu has a smoking problem), but other times it’s just one or two members who go alone to have peace away from the ongoing world overhead.

“I heard what you told Yong,” says Chaeryeong lowly.

Yuna’s heart drops. So she was eavesdropping.

Chaeryeong continues. “One moment, I think you and I are just fine, and the next, you’re trying your best to stay away from me. Are we best friends or what? Which one will it be? Don’t play.” Chaeryeong sounds genuinely sad. “I thought you told me we’d stay together. That we’d keep being. And all that shit.”

“I don’t trust myself around you,” at last says Yuna, carefully.

Chaeryeong snorts. It’s not a happy noise. “You what?”

God, how can she say this in a way that belies her true feelings yet pacifies Chaeryeong’s hurt? “I like you, Chaeryeong. I really do. I like you a lot. Too much. It— it . . . gets in the way of our job.”

Chaeryeong’s brows knit. She throws her a look. “The fuck . . . ?”

“Will you stop cursing at me?”

“Will you start making some sense?”

Yuna makes as if she’s going to get to her feet. “Whatever,” she says, even though it’s _not_ whatever, but she hates fighting with Chaeryeong, and she hates avoiding Chaeryeong, but she’s just not ready for this conversation and maybe it’s because avoiding Chaeryeong is better than losing Chaeryeong entirely. “If you keep dancing here, I’ll tell Ryujin. She’ll beat your ass.”

She tries to escape. Chaeryeong’s hand reaches out and grips her ankle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she scowls.

It’s a reverse mirror image of when Yuna grabbed Chaeryeong’s ankle that time at the tightrope. She fights a shudder. The parallels. They don’t make sense. “I”m _leaving_ ,” she enunciates.

“No, you’re not. We’re not _done_.”

Yuna tries to yank her foot away. Chaeryeong holds on. Yuna struggles harder, and Chaeryeong reaches out to snatch her other ankle. Yuna decides she’s had enough, so she flips into a back handspring but it doesn’t have the effect she quite wanted and all that happens is that she ends up with her in a heap on the floor and Chaeryeong still clinging to her legs like a stubborn barnacle. Quickly she starts trying to wrestle her down.

“Jisu—and—Yeji,” says Chaeryeong through her teeth. “They’ve been—going strong for—years.”

It’s hard to fight back when Yuna doesn’t want to harm Chaeryeong’s newly healed injuries. She flops around on the floor like a dying fish, hoping to shake her off.

“—Felix and—Changbin—literally almost married—”

“Let me go!”

Chaeryeong dodges her flailing arm. She glowers, her face inches from Yuna’s, their bodies connected by the way she is pinning her wrist and sternum. “Don’t even—get me started—on Dongyoung and Yuta,” Chaeryeong pants. “Yong doesn’t give—give any of them shit, for any of it.”

Yuna surges, flips them around. They roll. She pins Chaeryeong this time, applying pressure with her elbow, her legs in between Chaeryeong’s knees. They’re both breathing hard. “They’re not the same as us,” grunts Yuna. Her loose hair is a curtain, falling on either side of Chaeryeong’s face, closing them off from the outside world. “Yeji and Jisu—they’re different—”

Chaeryeong kicks her. Yuna swears. Chaeryeong seizes her, flips them around. They’re basically playing hot potato, each one trying to come out on top. They’ve done this before, but never while angry. 

“—they’re nothing like us,” finishes Yuna.

“Then what the hell are we, Yuna?” hisses Chaeryeong.

She’s got her in a headlock. Yuna twists to escape; Chaeryeong wraps her leg around her hip and hooks them back to the same position they were in before. They scuffle on and on. Yuna is holding back, but Chaeryeong isn’t. Since when did Chaeryeong have so much anger? “I’m sorry,” gasps out Yuna.

Chaeryeong doesn’t let up. She’s caging her between her elbows. “Why did you tell Hyunjin that?”

“That I’m sorry?”

“No, that you—” She struggles for words, and for breath. “That you wanted to—kiss me.”

Yuna freezes. Chaeryeong lets go of her now-limp body with a noise of disdain and scootches backward, allowing the two of them to have room at last. 

Their ragged breathing fills the studio.

It takes some time before Yuna finds it in herself to sit up. Her arms feel like jelly. She wraps them gingerly around her knees and doesn’t look at Chaeryeong, instead choosing to focus on a spot on the floor, her hair a curtain to obscure her view of the other girl.

“Was it . . . . some sort of bet you made with him?” asks Chaeryeong finally.

Yuna laughs hollowly. “What?”

“A bet. I don’t know. First person to make Chaeryeong look like an idiot gets thirty bucks.”

And Yuna would never place a bet on ridiculing Chaeryeong, and she would never play with Chaeryeong’s feelings in that way. This is what happens when best friends stop becoming best friends. They stop knowing each other, they stop being able to read each other and trust each other. Her eyes well as looks up at the other girl, who looks just as surprised to see tears there.

“No,” chokes Yuna, somewhere in between a laugh and a sob. “No, I didn’t do that. God, do you even know me at all?”

Chaeryeong’s lips thin out. “I don’t think you know me either,” she whispers.

They stare, then look away. The lights in the studio flicker off at their lack of motion. Yuna waves a haphazard arm to turn them back on again, but it doesn’t work, so she just gives up and sinks so that her back is against on the cold floor, eyes shutting in the darkness, trying to find peace of mind. Trying. She’s trying.

There’s a hesitation. Then Chaeryeong crawls toward her.

“Don’t cry,” she murmurs, touching Yuna’s arm. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

Yuna opens her eyes, blinking back tears. They spill out on either side of her face. She can’t even see Chaeryeong in the salty darkness. She sobs a little. Chaeryeong lies down by her side, and Yuna latches on, burying her face in her shoulder, trying. Trying, trying, trying.

“I shouldn’t have distrusted you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. You know that, right?” asks Chaeryeong.

Yuna shakes. She holds on. The studio is dark and quiet.

Chaeryeong wraps an arm around her, and just like that it feels like they’re in their bunk bed together, just two girls snuggling together, growing up together. Everything, together. Fuck, if they could have just fallen in love together.

“Yeji and Jisu—they love each other,” Chaeryeong works up. “That’s why I compared them to us. Don’t you think we love each other?”

Yuna sniffles. “You know how much I care about you.”

“Then why . . . . ?”

And this is the crux of it. Yuna sees it now. It’s not that she and Chaeryeong have stopped becoming close, or that they’ve stopped understanding each other—it’s that their way of understanding each other is changing to the point where they’re having trouble grasping it again. They aren’t best friends anymore and it’s because Yuna doesn’t want them to be. They aren’t best friends anymore, because Yuna wants them to be something different.

She needs to tell her.

She lifts her head. In the darkness of the studio, she sees Chaeryeong’s beautiful eyes, just as wet as hers. Yuna shifts closer, all the way until her forehead knocks gently against Chaeryeong’s, and she breathes, eyes closing. She just wants to soak in the moment. Before everything comes crashing down around them and she’ll never be this close to her again.

She is about to open her mouth when Chaeryeong kisses her.

Her words die in her throat. She stays stock still, unable to process, and Chaeryeong kisses harder, silently begging her to reciprocate. And so Yuna kisses back, because what else is she supposed to do? Her lips are warm, and they taste like salt. She opens her mouth and so does Chaeryeong, and then they’re kissing for real, Chaeryeong grabbing her shirt in one hand and her face in the other as if she wants more, more anything, more _Yuna_.

They break apart. They’re out of breath. Again.

Yuna’s eyes open slowly.

“What if,” huffs Chaeryeong, “I want us to be like Yeji and Jisu?”

She cuts Yuna off when she tries to speak.

“What if I want to kiss you? And be with you? And love you? What then, Yuna? Is there something wrong with that?” She’s shaking. She lets her go and sits up, her hair a mess. “Is it so hard to notice how much I like you? You’re not that much of an idiot. I know you’re aware of it. So why— _why_ —”

Yuna sits up too. The studio stays dark.

“Oh,” is all she can say.

They stay there, both of them unmoving, as they try to read each other’s faces.

Fuck it. Talking is too hard. Yuna just shifts forward, pulls Chaeryeong into her lap, and kisses her, and she kisses back.

“Dance with me,” Chaeryeong murmurs, in between kisses.

Yuna takes her sweet time to respond. There is no rush. They’ve been sitting here for at least half an hour, just making out, and Yuna doesn’t want to stop. “Your leg.”

“We’ll take it slow.” She places her lips on Yuna’s chin, then cheek, and then she tries to rise to her feet. Yuna stops her. Instead, she takes Chaeryeong by the thighs and lifts her up, setting her gently back down on the ground once she’s on her feet.

“Hot,” remarks Chaeryeong.

“Shut up,” says Yuna, making grabby hands. It’s too dark here. The studio lights must be broken. Chaeryeong finds her, slipping her arms around Yuna’s neck as Yuna fumbles before her palms rest lightly on Chaeryeong’s waist. They sway a little while. It’s unbelievable that they went from absolute roughhousing to whatever this mushy stuff is—the mood turned around so quick.

“We’re so funny,” says Chaeryeong, thinking the same thing as her. “We’re the dumbest bitches.”

“Speak for yourself,” breathes Yuna. “I liked you first.”

Chaeryeong tucks her chin in disbelief. “You did not.”

“Ask anyone. They’ll testify.”

“You _told_?” says Chaeryeong. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“I told everyone,” says Yuna grimly.

Chaeryeong snorts a laugh and puts her head on her shoulder. And yeah, this disastrous-romantic situation of theirs really is comedic. Yuna holds in her laughter. They sway, and sway. 

They’ve done this before. Danced like this, that is. Yuna has always been sure that Chaeryeong had no idea how much it affected her—but, well, here they are.

The lo-fi music in the background is chill, sweet, and quiet, the low bass thrumming gently through their feet. Yuna closes her eyes and imagine she’s in a forest glen, surrounded by trees and flowers, just like the characters in the cottage core themed holo-books she reads. Never mind that she’s never seen a real plant with her own two eyes. Maybe the team should think about adding a pseudo-flower to the studio—it would add a nice pop of color.

“What are you thinking about?” Chaeryeong whispers.

“About how I like your bare face.”

A smile. “More than my face with makeup on?”

“Mmm . . . I like them both equally.” 

Each of them has a different aesthetic. Bare-faced Chaeryeong is couch-potato Chaeryeong, her legs thrown over Yuna’s lap as she munches on cheese puffs and talks about things that lack substance but are pleasant all the same. Makeup Chaeryeong is professional Chaeryeong, her hair tied back in tight braids and her sleek gun tucked in the case by her left hip and her eyes dark and focused. Yuna loves them both. Yuna loves all of her. She hugs her tighter.

After a little while, when it becomes apparent that Yuna isn’t going to say anything else, she leans in to rest her head on Yuna’s shoulder, her warm breath feathering across her collarbone.

“I like this song,” Chaeryeong mumbles into her skin.

 _I like you_ , Yuna wants to say. “Me too.”

“Are you still ticklish at your neck? I remember you used to be.”

“I’m not anymore.”

Chaeryeong noses closer. “Then can I do this?”

“Sure.”

“No. This,” Chaeryeong says, her voice dipping, and then her lips press against the curve of Yuna’s neck.

“F—fuck,” she breathes.

Chaeryeong stops for a moment. Hesitant. “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” _Oh, yes_.

“Good. I’ve been wanting . . . .” Chaeryeong reaches up to grasp Yuna’s chin and tilt it upward, exposing her jaw. “Wanting to . . . .”

She can’t seem to finish her sentence. “Wanting to what?” Yuna says. 

“This,” is the simple response, and then she’s kissing her on the mouth once more, as if they weren’t just doing this ten minutes ago. Chaeryeong kisses the same way she lives: deeply, importantly, like Yuna is important. Like Yuna is her everything.

 _You are my everything_ , Yuna thinks, and hopes that Chaeryeong will somehow understand this in the way that Yuna tilts her head slightly and parts her lips. They really couldn’t go half an hour without kissing again, huh? She hardly notices that Chaeryeong’s maneuvering them backward until she finds herself pushed up against the cold mirror. Chaeryeong accidentally steps on her foot and Yuna gasps, breaking the kiss to throw her head back, her eyes smarting. “Sorry, sorry,” Chaeryeong whispers, holding her in place gently as her lips travel down her jaw.

The lo-fi music is still crooning in the background. 

Yuna feels dizzy. “Just to get something straight here,” she says. “So, this all means that you like me, right?”

Chaeryeong pauses. “I . . . Yes.”

“And you’re not going to take it back, right?”

“You’re an idiot.”

Yuna whines. “I’m trying to communicate here.”

“We’ve been making out for an hour. You’re insufferable. _Here’s_ how to communicate,” says Chaeryeong, She straightens up. “Shin Yuna, do you like me?”

She’s using a fake deep voice that makes Yuna giggle and lightly slap her shoulder. “I literally just asked you that—you’re a phony.”

She keeps using the deep voice. “Next. Shin Yuna, do you love me?”

“I think so.”

“And do you want to be with me forever and ever and dance together until we’re old?”

“I’ll still dance with you even when we’re old,” Yuna says. Because that’s obvious. “But you didn’t answer _my_ question. I said no take-backsies. Do you agree? No take-backsies?”

Chaeryeong entertains her. “Well, if we’re going to stoop _that_ low, then here. _I_ gave you my Valentine’s Day card when we were in fourth grade. I spent a whole day making it perfect. You dare to act as if your love is any deeper than mine? Paltry.”

Yuna smothers a laugh. “I don’t even remember that,” she confesses.

“What? You betray me like this? What a toad.”

“What’s a toad?”

“It’s a—oh, whatever. They’re extinct.”

Only Yuna and Chaeryeong would be chatting about amphibians right now. Their position is intimate, proximity intoxicating. Chest-to-chest, lips red, hair mussed. Chaeryeong’s eyes are shining. Yuna can see her own irises, reflected in them. Maybe this means their happiness is an endless loop; maybe this means they are forever.

“So no take-backs.”

“ _Yuna_ ,” Chaeryeong groans, as she knocks their foreheads softly together. “You drive me up the wall, you know that.”

“I think it’s you who’s doing the driving of walls,” Yuna says, gesturing meaningfully around at the way she’s pinned to the mirror.

At this point she’s just messing with her. Chaeryeong kisses her to shut her up. They giggle too much for it to be a proper makeout session, but, well, it’s better this way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! leave a comment, if you can >:D chaeryuna my babiez  
> ~ yerin 03142021
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/_regret_me_not) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/_regret_me_not)


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